Curated OER
Rhythm and Improv, Jazz and Poetry
Connect the ideas of jazz improvisation and art to writing poetry. Learners collaborate and write different lines of poetry, imitating the jazz styles of improvisation and freewriting. Take a close look at the poems "Tenebrae" by Yusef...
Core Task Project
Whatif by Shel Silverstein
What a skillful way to incorporate Shel Silverstein, a wonderful author, into the classroom. Composed of three tasks, children are led through a series of text-dependent questions that force them to unveil the meaning of Silverstein's...
Novelinks
Tuck Everlasting: Similes, Metaphors, and Personification in Imagery
Poetic language is abundant in Natalie Babbitt's beautiful novel, Tuck Everlasting. Learners note the examples of similes, metaphors, and personification they find as they read, and illustrate how the language creates a sensory...
EngageNY
Inferring about Character: Close Reading of the Poem “Inside Out” and Introducing QuickWrites
Grab a partner! Scholars partner up to take a second look at the verse novel Inside Out & Back Again. They discuss questions about and connections to the novel and then learn how to complete a Quick Write task properly. To finish,...
Curated OER
Dancing through Poetry
Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...
Curated OER
Words That Reflect Art
Observe International Art Appreciation Day by viewing, reading, and creating original works of art.
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Diversity in World Literature Lesson 5: The Tragic Hero
Should identifying a tragic hero be based on a universal definition or a definition based on the morals and values of a specific culture? As part of a study of Things Fall Apart, class members read Sylvia Plath's "Colossus" and then...
Curated OER
Close Reading of a Sonnet
Students practice reading sonnets line by line to find the message of the sonnet. In this sonnet lesson, students read a sonnet one line at a time as the teacher projects it for the entire class. As each line is shown,...
Great Schools
Different Types of Writing
What type of writing is this? Learners read a brief introduction to various types of text: instructions, explanations, poems, folk tales, novels, informative, and arguments. The introduction doesn't explain these, so...
Curated OER
The Tiger!
William Blake's immortal poem "The Tiger!" launches a study of these magnificent creatures. After a close reading of the poem, class members compare his poem to Blake's artwork. Individuals then choose a favorite tiger species to...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Navigating Modernism with J. Alfred Prufrock
Learners explore the role of the individual in the modern world by closely reading and analyzing T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
Literacy Design Collaborative
Catching a Grenade: How Word Choice Impacts Meaning and Tone
Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...
Curated OER
Interaction as Analysis: Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is a thing with feathers” is the focus of a series of activities that model for learners how close reading can lead to understanding. The whole class plays with the metaphor, groups talk about the author’s...
Curated OER
Everyone Sang - Moods in Poetry
Start by reading the poem "Everyone Sang" by Siegried Sassoon. The archive also houses an audio clip, so consider playing that instead of reading it aloud. After hearing the poem twice, middle and high schoolers will discuss a list of...
Curated OER
Beach Poetry
Familiarize young analysts with the relationship between words, meaning, and visual images. They consider the relationship between the painting Beach Poetry and the poem Sandpaper. They compose and illustrate an original a...
Curated OER
Elements of Poetry
Prepare your learners to identify figurative language in poetry. Tips for reading poetry and what to look for are listed on these slides. Rhetorical devices are defined and plenty of examples are given.
Curated OER
Pictures in Words: Poems of Tennyson and Noyes
Students examine how Tennyson and Noyes use words to paint vivid pictures. They read and analyze two poems, complete an online scavenger hunt, complete a worksheet, and write examples of alliteration, personification, metaphor, simile,...
McGraw Hill
Study Guide for Frankenstein
Help the class uncover the story of Frankenstein. Learners answer questions and complete activities to respond to the text Frankenstein as they read. Scholars learn new vocabulary, respond to personal and text-dependent questions,...
EngageNY
Comparing Text Structures: To Kill a Mockingbird and “Those Winter Sundays” (Chapter 6 and 7)
Scholars carry out a close read of the poem "Those Winter Sundays" to determine its point. They look at the words used and the structure of the stanzas and then compare the poem's narrative structure to chapter 6 of To Kill a...
National Endowment for the Humanities
The Impact of a Poem's Line Breaks: Enjambment and Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool"
Students analyze the Gwendolyn Brooks use of enjambment in her poem "We Real Cool." In this poetry analysis activity, students define common poetic devices and the examples of enjambment in the poem. Students discuss the poem and write...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Robert Frost's "Mending Wall": A Marriage of Poetic Form and Content
High schoolers examine the relationship between a poem's form and its content in Robert Frost's poem, 'Mending Wall.' They read and analyze the poem, explore websites, listen to an audio clip of Frost reading the poem, and write an...
Curated OER
Place and Character in Poetry
Learners examine how place in poetry helps give clues about character. In this poetry activity, students read a poem while focusing on the descriptions of the room that is being described and predict what type of person would live there....
National Endowment for the Humanities
Seeing Sense in Photographs & Poems
Learners analyze photographs and poetry as forms of each other. In this poetry and photography analysis instructional activity, students use the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and poetry from William Carlos William to explore how poetry...
Curated OER
Japanese Poetry: Tanka? You're Welcome!
Young scholars analyze Japanese tanka poetry. In this Japanese poetry lesson, students identify analyze the structure of tanka poetry. Young scholars complete the activities at the given links for the lesson and compose two tanka poems.